Aftermath
by Macx
Summary: A tag to the episode Virtual Fatality


** Aftermath**   
A missing scene to Virtual Fatality   
by Birgit Staebler   


The dark-haired, tall man sat in the silent living room, which was bathed in twilight. A large TV screen was switched on, replaying prior taped scenes. Currently a man with light brown hair, dressed in a cloak was performing magical tricks to the delight of his spectators. He was thin and pale, looking overdressed in his costume. Birds flew out of his hands and transformed into colorful confetti; fire formed in his hands and danced around him; objects and people disappeared. Again and again, Ace Cooper replayed the tape, his face expressionless. But his eyes displayed what his face tried to hide. He was deeply disturbed and there was something unreadable but prominent in his eyes. It was like a mixture of fear, disbelief and desperation   
"Hey, man, what's going on?"   
The young voice let him flinch briefly and he accidentally hit the 'pause' button on the remote. The frame froze on the magician on the stage as he raised his hands, creating small fireworks around his fingertips.   
"Ace? You okay?" Cosmo asked, eyes darting between his older friend and the image on the screen. "Why are you watching this?"   
Ace Cooper switched off the TV and tossed the remote onto the table. "No reason," he said dismissively, noting there was a light tremor in his voice.   
Cosmo shook his head. "You rarely do things without reason, Ace. So why watch those recordings over and over again?"   
Ace turned his head, raising one eyebrow, and shot Cosmo a questioning look. "How long have you been there?"   
"Long enough to know that something's bothering you. Hey, Hagen is behind bars in a mental home! He's gone and you are back. Everything's back to normal. What's the matter?"   
Ace silently gazed at the dark screen, eyes shadowed in a still much too pale and gaunt face. The ordeal of the virtual world was barely 48 hours old and within the week he had spent inside the VR tank he had lost considerable weight. On top of that he had used the Magic Force to finally bring the kidnapper and thief down for good, and expending so much energy in his weakened state had not done him any good. Vega would have liked to see him in a hospital, but Ace had declined. All he needed was some rest at home. Mona had insisted on the same as they had walked away from the open air celebration of 200 years of Electro City, but he had waved her concerns off. At that time, adrenaline had helped him stay upright.   
The moment he had been back at the Magic Express, Ace Cooper had collapsed. He had slept for almost fifteen hours straight, but instead of feeling better, he felt even worse. The events haunted him and he couldn't sleep without seeing the images Jimmy Hagen had forced into his mind to learn his tricks. Ace had little recollection of the actual kidnapping. He had been hit over the head and the next thing he knew he was fighting monsters and was trying to free Mona. There had been no end to the creatures trying to kill him.   
And he had not had the Magic Force to help him. It was probably the worst of the whole ordeal. Ace depended on the magical energies he could access, though he rarely used them in his shows to the full extent. As a stage magician, he had to perform with stage tricks. What made him special were those shows no one could really explain, as well as what the media called charisma. But in the virtual world, there had been no Magic Force. His mind, connected to a computer, had not realized the danger as real enough, though Ace had felt the same pain and fear as he would in a real world battle. Whenever he had tried to unleash the Magic Force, he had been met by failure.   
That was the real horror. The loss of his magic at a time where peoples' lives depended on him.   
Ace shivered and his hands clenched into fists. The presence of this powerful magic inside him was a welcome feeling and it was his security. He always felt it with him, each hour of the day, a background hum so powerful it could just as well destroy instead of help, but Ace would never use his powers that way. He had had the talent since childhood and a lot of hard training and meditation had enabled him to access his potential. Few really understood what it was, but those who had had a glimpse were truly amazed -- or afraid. Vega had been apprehensive the first time he had found out that Ace worked with more than just stage tricks. Cosmo had thought it to be 'cool'. Mona... she had been frightened for a while.   
"He is good," Ace now said softly. "Very, very good."   
"Because he stole everything from you, man!" Cosmo reminded him. "Hagen is nothing! A nobody! All he was, he stole from your mind."   
Ace smiled wryly. "So now we have two Ace Coopers."   
"There is only one Ace!" Cosmo insisted. "Hagen was a copycat! He used your magic!"   
"And he used me."   
The younger man was silent for a while. Cosmo remembered only too well the scene he had seen when he had broken into the lab. Ace, connected to a virtual reality machine, floating in a holding tank, fighting invisible enemies. When he had finally entered the cyber world in his own gear, Cosmo had been shocked at what Hagen and his accomplice had thrown at the magician. Ace had been on the verge of a total breakdown, overpowered by the creatures Hagen had thrown at him, weakened and desperate. Cosmo had come barely in time to help Ace out of the VR world. He had managed to break free in the end and they had apprehended Hagen, but it had not been easy.   
"It's over, man," Cosmo insisted.   
"Not really." Ace shook his head and sighed. "I still see it all in here." He pointed at his head. "What Hagen did...." Ace stopped, closing his eyes.   
"You don't really have to tell me," Cosmo said quickly. "It's okay."   
The magician smiled dimly. "Maybe. Maybe not. But I wanted to thank you for everything, Cosmo. Thanks for believing in me and helping me out of the virtual world."   
"Hey, no problem, man." Cosmo pasted a cheery grin on his face. "That's what friends are for!" But the cheeriness never reached his eyes.   
Ace gave him a smile, which died down again. Cosmo fidgeted, unable to come up with something to cheer Ace up. No one really knew the full details of what had happened inside the virtual reality, but it must have been too much for Ace to just shrug it off.   
The younger man left silently, worried and unable to come up with an idea how to help Ace. For once, Ace needed his help to deal with something, and he couldn't do it. How often had Ace bailed him out, had listened to his problems, had overlooked his teenage rowdiness? How often had Cosmo been in trouble? Now Ace was in trouble of a kind, but he was at a total loss. If it were a technical problem, yes, he would be able to help. But emotional stuff....? Cosmo sighed. He wasn't so good dealing with his own feelings or opening up either, so who was he to try and help Ace?   
Mona would be a likely candidate to take on this job, but Ace had refused to see her in the last two days. She had told Cosmo that she understood and that Ace had always dealt with his problems alone, even as a teenager. He had gone off to fight his demons, then had returned and never mentioned it again. Cosmo hated the idea, but for now he had to accept. 

* * * 

A scream echoed through the bedroom and Ace woke with a start, eyes wild. He struggled against the blanket covering him.   
"Mona!"   
He panted, lungs on the verge of bursting, and his muscles trembled violently. Sweat covered his body and his mind was awhirl with confusing images.   
"No!" he whispered, slumping back. "Not real...."   
His eyes focused on the ceiling, trying to find a center to calm himself. It had been a dream again. One of the many who confronted him with the virtual reality where Mona had been put into danger over and over again, where he had failed to rescue her. The images were burned into his mind and he couldn't ignore them. It had been a game, set up by Hagen, but it had been so real.... too real....   
Ace sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and closed his eyes. He evened out his breathing and finally calmed down enough to trust his legs to carry him. He dressed, then silently left the Magic Express. There was somewhere he had to go..... 

* * * 

Cosmo woke to the sound of his alarm clock and he grumbled something under his breath, swiping at the offensive machine. It stopped with a final squeal. Dragging himself out of sleep and his bed, he made it to the bathroom where a shower more or less refreshed him. When he finally arrived in the kitchen, he found it empty and unused. Usually Ace was up way before him. Maybe he had slept in. In his current physical condition, rest was the best medicine.   
"Angel?"   
"How can I be of service, Cosmo?" the artificial intelligence asked.   
"Is Ace still sleeping?"   
"No. He left three hours ago with the Racer."   
Cosmo's eyes widened. Three hours ago? That had been almost in the middle of the night!   
"Where did he go?"   
"He didn't tell me, Cosmo."   
Cosmo frowned. "Can you locate the Magic Racer?"   
A map popped up on the screen and Angel started tracing. A blinking dot indicated the car's current position.   
"Oh, no.... Hagen's residence. Or what's left of it anyway," Cosmo muttered. "What's he doing there?"   
"Insufficient data," Angel answered dutifully.   
He shook his head. "Warm up the bike. I'll go after him," he decided.   
On one hand he knew Ace needed some time to deal with the experiences, but on the other..... he needed a friend, and Cosmo was the one who thought he could do it.   
Ten minutes later he was racing toward the lonely house on the high cliff outside Electro City. 

* 

It was early in the morning with the mist still clinging to the ground and the sun not yet strong enough to pierce through the cloud cover. It spoke of rain already and by midday it would probably pour down again. Cosmo stopped the bike in front of the security fence and got out, looking at the ruins shrouded in the wavy whiteness. Three days had gone by since the building had been almost completely destroyed by the explosion Ace had triggered inside the underground lab and by now construction equipment was lining the driveway up to what had once been the   
main entrance. Bulldozers, steam shovels,   
Bobcats and more. The moment the officials gave the go, this ruin would be torn down. It had been declared highly unstable and dangerous, and multiple signs had been put up. From the outside, the Hagen residence still looked rather okay, but the inside was one big mess. The lab had burned down almost completely, taking sixty percent of the private home on top of it with it.   
No big loss, Cosmo decided as he secured the bike against theft and then walked carefully closer.   
Up close the ruin looked even more impressive than from afar. It had the appearance of a movie set for a horror movie, just waiting for someone to shout 'action' and monsters to lurch toward the hero or heroine. Walking into the once proud building, Cosmo stepped over charred wooden beams, molten plastic, fallen roof sections, always cautious not to stray too far from the route declared safe.   
A labyrinth of more debris lay ahead of him and he peered into the murky twilight. Getting out a high power flash light he searched on. He had a good guess where Ace was, but he hoped he was wrong.   
Half an hour later he found he wasn't. Getting to the lab had been difficult and not without danger, but Cosmo had made it. Now, his clothes smudged, he climbed over a fallen shelf and peered into the twilightish lab. Yes, just as he had expected, Ace was there. The burned remains of the VR tank lay on the floor, the second tank partially shattered. The computers were a molten mass; nothing more than scrap metal. Ace was fingering a piece of cable and Cosmo recognized it as part of the feed between the virtual image world and Ace's mind.   
"You shouldn't have come here, Cosmo. It's dangerous," the solemn voice of his friend startled him.   
Cosmo stepped deeper inside, ducking his head to avoid fallen poles, charred and split open from the heat. Some of the walls around him had collapsed, partitions blackened, windows blasted out. Nothing left at all.   
"Then what are you doing here?" he asked.   
Ace never raised his eyes from the cable. "Closing a chapter," he finally said, then dropped the charred cable.   
His cloak swished silently around him as the magician crossed the ruined lab and stopped in front of the second VR tank. He reached out and touched the smoked glass. Cosmo felt awkward, like he shouldn't be here. Suddenly Ace closed his eyes and the hand touching the VR tank was bathed in a bright, white light. The magical energies raced over the tank and it exploded into a million pieces. Cosmo ducked automatically, shielding his head, but no particles touched him. Like through magic they had stopped right before him and piled on the floor.   
Magic. Uh-huh....   
Ace lowered his hand, trembling slightly.   
"Feeling better?" Cosmo asked, hesitantly coming closer.   
Ace sighed shakily. "In a way, yes. I know it will not destroy the memories, but I think you could say it helped." He smiled briefly.   
"Then how about we leave this creepy place?"   
"A very good idea."   
Outside, Ace watched the mist covered ocean slap against the cliff. The morning sun light played over his pale features and Cosmo decided that his friend definitely needed some more rest. There would be no shows for at least a week. The public understood. Then there would be the trial of Jimmy Hagen, though it would probably end with Hagen confined to the mental institute for the rest of his life. Ace didn't really have to make his statement in person, but knowing his friend, Cosmo was sure he would go.   
"Come on," he now said quietly. "Let's go home."   
Ace nodded slowly and walked back to the Magic Racer. 

* * * 

Mona Malone was busy searching through her wardrobe for a dress to wear for the performance tomorrow when the phone rang. She headed to the table and picked up the receiver, surprised when Ace's face appeared on the vid screen. He was no longer as pale as the last time she had seen him, but he still looked gaunt.   
"Hello, Mona," the dark-haired man said softly.   
"Ace! How are you?"   
"Better." A small smile flitted over his features. "I'm sorry for not taking your calls the last two days. I had... to deal with ...something." He sounded a bit strained.   
"I understand, Ace."   
"Listen, I'd like to invite you over for dinner if you are not too busy tonight." There was slight hesitation in his voice, telling her that Ace Cooper was still not back to normal.   
"Tonight would be just great," Mona told him.   
"Eight?"   
She nodded. "Eight is fine."   
When she had switched off the phone, Mona went back to the wardrobe and reached for a dark green dress that was neither too formal, nor too casual. Ace wanted and needed her company, which told her all she needed to know.   
She arrived at the Magic Express a few minutes early. Mona tightened her jacket around her shoulders as a cold wind pulled at it. It smelled like rain and the forecast had predicted a thunder shower for tonight. Angel opened the door the moment she approached and Mona hurried inside. Ace smiled as he saw her and Mona tried to ignore the lines still visible on his face.   
"Thanks for coming," he said softly.   
She shrugged out of the jacket. "How could I resist an invitation from the famous Ace Cooper?" she teased.   
He smiled again, a charming smile, almost reminding Mona of the Ace Cooper she was used to, as he took the jacket and accompanied her to the living room.   
Outside, the first signs of the storm echoed through the night. Lightning blazed across the dark sky and thunder rolled in.   
  



End file.
